After Final Four wins by UConn and Michigan, it’s still clear freshmen can’t beat experience in crunch time

INDIANAPOLIS — With fewer than five minutes left in the first half of a game that was spiraling away from Arizona, freshman point guard Brayden Burries dribbled up the sideline near the Michigan bench and right into the grown-up body of 22-year-old senior Roddy Gayle.

Unable to power through the trap and with no room to escape it, Burries’ only option was to call timeout. As he walked toward the bench, he glared toward his fellow freshman, forward Koa Peat, who had been frozen at half court. The look Burries gave him said it all: Why did nobody come to help?

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For an Arizona team with three freshmen in the starting lineup, there was no more defying gravity in the new college basketball landscape, where teams are older, more physically mature and fully professional. The history of this sport has long told us that winning a national title with a freshman-dominated team is exceedingly rare.

This Final Four has shown us that it may now be impossible.

Though the games played out in different ways at Lucas Oil Stadium, Michigan’s 91-73 win over Arizona and UConn’s 71-62 victory over Illinois both made the same statement: At the highest level of college basketball when championships are on the line, old beats young nearly every time.

“They had us on our heels all night,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said. “We couldn’t get into a rhythm. No one has been able to do that to us all year.”

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Eleven years ago in this building, Duke took down Wisconsin for the national title with a team led by four spectacular freshmen, all of whom eventually became first-round draft picks. Three years before that in New Orleans, Kentucky did it with Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague.

But that’s it. They’re the outliers.

Every year before and every year since has been the same story: No matter how talented they are or what they’re projected to be in the NBA, teams that rely on multiple first-year collegians to be their best players will likely…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mens-college-basketball/article/after-final-four-wins-by-uconn-and-michigan-its-still-clear-freshmen-cant-beat-experience-in-crunch-time-050620225.html

Author : Dan Wolken

Publish date : 2026-04-05 05:06:00

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